Roles on a warship

[Matthias777]

I'm trying to put together a detailed breakdown of a crew complement for a ship, and was wondering if anyone here had any knowledge in this area. Obviously there are large differences between the capital starships used in Star Wars as opposed to our modern-day or even historic warships, but many of the jobs still apply. Here's what I've got so far. Obviously, some of these roles are filled by more than one person, and in Star Wars, some roles will be at least partially filled by droids. Anyone have any more to add? On the list, I have included "systems operators"...what sort of systems would one operate aboard a capital ship? I know that there are things to be done, but I have limited knowledge as to the inner workings of a warship, be it sea- or space-bound.

Command Crew
Commanding Officer (CO)
Executive Officer (XO)
Tactical Officer (TO)

Bridge Crew
Helm (pilot)
Navigation
Sensors
Shields
Communications
Gunnery Control
Engineering

Other Roles
Systems operators (?)
Gunners
Chief of Engineering
Ship's mechanics/techs
Flight deck supervisor
Flight mechanics/techs (for fighters/shuttles)
Droid technicians
Starfighter pilots
Shuttle crews
Master-at-arms (head of shipboard security)
Shipboard security/marines
Regular troop complement
Paymaster/Treasurer
Ship's Clerk (equipment and provisions)
Armorer
Medical Staff
Cooks
Custodial staff
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Arek | Kage

[Mikael Hasselstein]

Some notes:

Command Crew
On large/important vessels, there would probably be three watch officers to command the bridge in addition to the Captain, (one would be the XO, and then a second and third officer), leaving the captain to see to other duties as he saw fit. On less important vessels, a 'third officer' would not be necessary.

On Imperial vessels, there would probably also be a political officer (COMPNOR) to keep everything on board in line with the dictates of the New Order, and to advise the captain about the political consequences of certain actions.

[Fallon Kell]

Don't forget the CAG!

(commander, aerospace group)
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Or that excessively long "Noooooooooo" was the Whining Side of the Force leaving him. - Dustflier

Complete Starship Construction System

[vanir]

On strategic craft half the crew compliment is redundant too. The full crew listing is for sustained operations. Half the crew is required to operate the vessel without penalty, there is a red and a blue crew (in europe a port and starboard crew), they do shifts so modern warships are never at any time operating at any less than full capability during wartime.

Also somewhere or other RAW says roughly a third of most capital ship crew compliments again, are in droids.

So actual crew to run a cruiser is always half the compliment listing, all the gunners and about a third more in droids than is listed.

[Matthias777]

[Gamer]

There isn't one for WEG and the only ruling I've seen from WOTC that is close is for Slave circuitry replacing 1/3 of crew.

[vanir]

The way you have it is what I was saying, crew listing only organics, but that actual crew including droids is significantly higher on large cruisers.

I use a shipboard crew condition for guidelines on operating procedures too. For cruisers, normal patrols are at skeleton crew while general quarters brings up to full crew and battle stations man the guns too.
This reflects a more realistic kind of idea of shipboard life imho and seems fair, cruisers are big and powerful, but take time to suddenly get into full action stations.

[Matthias777]

[vanir]

It does help make things like starfighter hit and run tactics very effective against large Imperial warships. If they aren't expecting an attack, you can dump a bunch of proton torpedos all over them whilst they're still operating at skeleton crew penalities on shields, point defence guns, etc.

But also the reason the Rebellion fought on the run. In fleet combat against prepared cruisers, starfighters can't really hurt them much.

Rather than making new rules for starfighters to have better effect against cruisers (which is effectively what R&E achieved over 2e and why I don't like it), it is much smarter to have expanded rules for cruisers which have weakness starfighters can conditionally exploit. That's much more realistic imho.

[CRMcNeill]

Personally, I'd rather see rules for starfighter squadrons being treated as complete units in capital ship combat (i.e. rather than rolling for individual starfighters, I'd like to see a single stat write-up for the entire unit, with specific ratings for the kind of mission to which the squadron is assigned).
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Fallon Kell]

Normally I don't like to treat things that way, but I can certainly see the benefit of reducing the amount of rolling by a 12:1 ratio!
_________________
Or that excessively long "Noooooooooo" was the Whining Side of the Force leaving him. - Dustflier

Complete Starship Construction System

[jmanski]

I'm with you on that. I've thought on it some, but don't quite know how to handle the defensive side...
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Blasted rules. Why can't they just be perfect?

[vanir]

I understand what you mean, we ran an expanded Endor fleet battle over a long weekend once, and only really had an application of combined actions rules to work with although we tried to adapt them as best we could.
It was pretty tricky finding the compromise between "realistic" combat results, and spending too much time rolling dice every round in what amounted to a battle lasting a few hours game time (four days realtime).

[CRMcNeill]

[jmanski]